This paper provides the rationale and purpose for a critical literacy awareness strategy, implemented to 20 English second language students at a township secondary school in South Africa. This empirical study provides insight into using newspapers as a pedagogical tool to develop students' language and critical literacy skills. Using different…

Research on content and language integrated learning (CLIL) has expanded substantially in the last 10 years. While research interests have predominantly focused on language learning outcomes and the comparison between CLIL and English as a foreign language (EFL) students' competence in the foreign language, recent studies have called for the need…

This paper reflects on and theorises the experience of developing a postgraduate core subject in EAP, exploring the role of both genre awareness and process management in facilitating writing from sources. Reflection on our initial genre-based pedagogies indicated that teaching the literature review to coursework students was not appropriate, and…

The authors, former middle and high school English teachers, review the rationale for using humor and fun in the classroom and provide detailed descriptions for teaching practices and activities that confer enjoyment and learning for language arts students. Although fun activities, these methods foster vocabulary development, grammar instruction,…

This article examines the effect of a teacher's cultural representations and tacit communicative style on interactive practices in the classroom. We compare two second-grade classrooms constituted predominantly by Latino immigrant children and teachers with differing cultural representations of education. Through video and acoustic analyses of…

Describes how a class of technical writing students learned to create their own style guides relevant to their areas of specialty. Includes a composite style guide. (TJ)

A description of a course in French composition at the University of Essex, which is based on "Exercices de style, " by R. Queneau. The course consists of writing variations of a single model story or paragraph. Six variations are presented and discussed to clarify the method. (AMH)

Language classroom activities fall into three categories: (1) citation, or samples, intended to exemplify the language system; (2) simulation; and (3) replication, activities with a definite nonlinguistic outcome, with communicative success or failure measured by the outcome, not by the language output itself. Instruction that relies primarily on…

Describes a classroom activity that emphasizes syntactic fluency and the richness of linguistic resources available in written language, while downplaying the "dos and don'ts" of traditional punctuation instruction. (RL)

The importance of the distinction between form and function in language use, the appropriateness of language to varying situations, the elements of discourse structure, and the paralinguistic features of communication are discussed. Classroom activities employing these principles to develop communicative competence are included. (PMJ)

The place of poetry in teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) and the role of linguistics are considered. It is suggested that poetry teaching has a place in advanced EFL learners' progreams as a means of extending the learners' knowledge of the language and increasing their sense of appropriateness and sensitivity to language use. The value…

The teaching activities presented in this document have been selected from a series of language study units prepared for teachers by the Queensland Language Development Project task force as part of the Studytalk project. They focus on inquiring into some of the varieties of language most accessible to teachers and students. In each of the three…

Four ideas for language classroom activities are presented, including an exercise in oral discourse analysis, a newspaper-reading activity using the holistic approach, the use of slight phonological changes to turn a title into a joke or play on words, and an exercise looking at varieties of language style. (MSE)

Defines basic characteristics and types of social conversation within small groups and gives guidelines for classroom practice stressing preliminary discussion of situations, topics, appropriate vocabulary, and language style. Discusses teacher's role during students' conversation practice and describes materials suitable for initial practice.…

Advocates teaching communicative skills through strategies that rely on real life situations and encourage students' performance of different social roles. Recommends de-emphasizing teacher presentation in favor of learner's practice and interaction with other learners. This stimulates creative manipulation of variable, open-ended materials…